SHIP WEAPONS COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE in No Man’s Sky

Howdy folks and welcome to the Friday show which this week has become a guide instead of the usual g-log, as today, we’ll be looking at every weapon you can install on your ship in No Man’s Sky and seeing what each does best. <title> When it comes to weapons in No Man’s Sky, theyre actually pretty diverse, each one does something better than the others with very little crossover, on top of that, I will say at the beginning of this that preference plays a big part here, if you like a weapon over another weapon that performs far better at what you want to use it for, it doesn’t mean you’re making the wrong choice, most weapons can be used on their own to great effect, you just may require more titanium to replensih your shield due to longer fights.

I’ll also be discussing every weapon and showing testing footage of those weapons in their highest DPS layouts, it is by far the most effective and other than some potential unlikely situations, DPS is what you should be going for over Damage per shot. That being said, we’ll also take a look at what can be done with very limited space and so little to no upgrades. So let’s get riiiiiiight, into revieeeeews <1 Positron Ejector> The Positron Ejector is an impressive piece of tech, it has an insanely high DPS, so high in fact that when fully upgraded to the highest DPS layout it reaches 41,405 Damage Per Second, this is almost 6 times the DPS of the next highest weapon which is the Cyclotron Ballista at 7,043. All of these numbers are of course, before any bonuses your ship may apply. Now with all that in mind, we come to the shortcomings of the Positron Ejector, this is primarily it’s very widespread, so wide that getting 3 or so of its 20 projectiles per shot to hit, takes a fair bit of skill and for you to be quite close to the enemy.

Its range is also lacking at only 400, but as the spread makes it useless at even 400 in comparison to other weapons, it’s not such an issue. The Positron Ejector has a few uses, however, one requiring great skill that you must learn, and that is if using within a rotation. If fighting within a rotation, you may choose specific weapons that perform at different ranges, the Positron Ejectors place here would be right as the enemy is touching your nose you switch for a last-second volley of power. Using in this way it could become quite effective but would require massive amounts of practice and of course for you to have your weapon orders committed to muscle memory, this is not so much for the casual player. The other use I would say is when very swiftly taking out an entire fleet of freighters for their goods. Freighters are huge, even their cargo pods are huge and don’t tend to fly off, so all or most of your shots will hit, meaning the Positron Ejector’s full power can be called upon to take what is theirs very quickly with even just the base unit.

<2 Photon Cannon> The Photon Cannon is the one ship weapon in No Man’s Sky that absolutely every player will know, and that is purely because it is a mandatory weapon for every ship, it’s placement is guaranteed and unchanging, it will always be located in the first available slot in the top left. This can present some anguish in fighters, as even a max slot fighter hosting the full 38 may have the slot below the Photon Cannon’s main unit inaccessible for use, and unless the 3 below it and the 6 to the right of those are available for use, the maximum layout cannot be achieved, this results in a 3.9% decrease in fire rate and a 4.5% decrease in damage. The layout of the upgrades is the same 3 by 3 layout, only detached from the main unit. The Photon Cannon is a rather useful weapon, it is a somewhat expected and generic machine gun, in essence, firing single projectile shots at a high rate, with the main module only it is the highest rate of fire weapon, though with all upgrades optimally placed it becomes the second.

The Photon Cannon has a fast projectile speed, which is technically 4th out of the 6th for Projectile speed, but at 1,800 compared to the 2,000 of Infra-Knife and Positron Ejector, with the Phase Beam being instant, it’s not that far off from the joint second place. This allows the Photon Cannon to be used well in Dog Fighting as it’s real time to shine, yet takes second place in that when it comes down to pure effectiveness, it’s superior being the Phase Beam.

But it’s worth is not just in one singular use, it’s worth is in everything, it is the Jack of all trades, master of none, but I mean this in a good way, not as a derogatory dismission. The Photon Cannon is already there which gives you a one slot advantage by only requiring 9 to meet its capacity while all but the Phase Beam and Rocket Launcher require 10. It can be used effectively in both movement based fighting and static defensive fighting. <3 Phase Beam> The Phase Beam is that first weapon that really gets you going, it is often present on new ships you may purchase and has some impressive power. The Phase Beam is an instant hit weapon that fires 2 projectiles per shot, it appears aesthetically as 2 continuous lasers but is, in fact, shot based, this is likely due to ease of programming.

The Fire Rate of the Phase Beam is actually the slowest of all and completely unchanging due to the lack of Fire Rate upgrades, but this doesn’t stop it being incredibly powerful. Its statistics are deceiving in many ways, if you look at the DPS, it is the lowest when not counting the Rocket Launcher, and you shouldn’t use DPS to measure the Rocket Launcher as I’ll cover shortly. The low DPS, however, is made a complete non-issue via a special attribute the Phase Beam has, which is the lock-on it exhibits. Provided you have the enemy ship in range and within the sizeable reticule of the Phase Beam, both lasers will hit the vessel directly and all of that damage will strike. You will not lose shots here and there, they all hit for full force, and that lack of literal collateral damage brings the Phase Beam up to be the most powerful Dog Fighting weapon out there. During a dogfight with heavy movement, your enemy is being rather evasive and annoying, any weapon that has travel time will be missing quite often even if you have a perfect aim to hit in front of its movements as when the enemy changes direction, those shots already on route are going to waste, but the Phase Beam is instant and locks on fairly easily, this allows you to make every shot hit if your dexterity is high enough.

It also has by far the greatest heat time at seconds before overheating, which is fairly crazy, it’s not too far from double the next longest, which is the Photon Cannon at The Phase Beam does, however, have a drawback, and this is that it requires charging regularly. You could last most fights from a full charge, with only large-scale fights such as the Sentinel 5 Star and maybe 4 Star requiring charging throughout, which can still be done easily via the quick menu, in the same way, that you recharge your shields. Plutonium is cheap, and most will carry a stack within their ship or cargo, so this really isn’t a big issue.

It should also be noted that while all main units except for the Rocket Launcher and Photon Cannon have charge bars insinuating they require charging, only the Phase Beam actually requires charging, the other 3 weapons that display this bar never use up that charge and so remain fully charged. The Phase Beam also carries a rather substantial Pro to, and that is it’s inventory footprint, due to the lack of Fire Rate upgrades, the entire Phase Beam only takes up 7 slots, and is by far the best weapon suited for filling your Technology slots, which at only 2 slots high puts a real drawback on housing anything but the Phase Beam or Rocket Launcher.

<4 Infra-Knife Accelerator> The Infra-Knife Accelerator is a colourful and fun weapon, it’s projectiles are not all that powerful, but it shoots 2 of them at a time and has the highest rate of fire of the lot, with an increase of over 25% from the second place Photon Cannon. The Infra-Knife Accelerator is very much similar to the Photon Canon, it has the same general uses, but is slightly worse at everything than the Photon Cannon for the most part. As far as the numbers go, it actually beats the Photon Cannon for DPS, though only very slightly, but has a massive drawback when it comes to overheating. When comparing to the Photon Cannon, the Infra-Knife Accelerator isn’t too far from half the time till overheat, and as they both have the same cooldown time, it’s quite a drawback. Due to this, I would suggest that you pulse instead of just holding down, learn through practice the length of time before it starts to go into the red, if you time it right a fraction of a second is all that is needed to reset its time to overheat.

Doing this can make it an effective weapon for sure, especially in movement heavy fights, that being said it is still only third in that respect. The Infra-Knife Accelerator does have a hidden pro, however, and this is it’s innate and subtle locking on. I would liken it to Aim-Assist present on consoles, this is a system which subtly assists the player in hitting the target to make up for the fact you are using a controller versus a mouse.

It’s also the primary reason that competitive games don’t cross-platform, as, without the assist on consoles, the mouse is too powerful, and with aim assist on consoles, the controller is too powerful. This lock-on aim-assist effect I observed while testing is quite substantial in making the Infra-Knife Accelerator an effective weapon. Though with all that it is still a second to the Photon Cannon, but not by all that much, making this a very clear preference play, so which of the 2 do you just like better. <5 Rocket Launcher> The Rocket Launcher is an interesting one for sure, it is a single module weapon with no upgrades that’s general use is on your first ship, giving you a large amount of power in the simplest form possible.

It’s DPS is just awful as it’s Fire Rate is per second, but it’s cooldown time is only 5, which skews the results a little. The Rocket Launcher is not any good at all in a battle with more than one weak ship when on its own, but it is certainly useful. The Rocket Launcher’s use is in its super high damage projectile, it deals 3000 damage, it also has a super high range at more than triple everything else. This allows you to start on the Rocket Launcher as the ships come toward you, and aim up your shot, it is not assisted as such but is quite accurate, you have a narrow reticule that must be placed perfectly, and luckily, you have quite a distance to aim up this shot before other weapons can be used.

Take your shot, then switch to another weapon, likely the Phase Beam and enjoy the extra 3000 damage you just got off on the enemy which likely ensured it’s destruction. This takes practice to get your timing right, but once you master it, the Rocket Launcher can become a cheap and effective addition to your lineup, that adds without replacing. You can thank 7101334 for showing me the potential of the Rocket Launcher that I had previously written off. <6 Cyclotron Ballista> The Cyclotron Ballista is a frankly ridiculous weapon, in the best way. The Cyclotron Ballista fires 2 high powered projectiles per shot at a rather low speed when fully upgraded it will fire more than 20 of these high powered projectiles per second resulting in the Cyclotron Ballista taking the 2nd place for DPS behind the Positron Ejector.

This is no weapon for movement fighting, this is what I would refer to as a defensive weapon. You stay still and what for the enemies to come in range, the second that reticule goes red, you start firing and by the time the first shots start hitting the enemy, you have almost finished firing your volley. Using this method you can get the majority of shots to hit which will destroy almost any enemy assuming you’re are in a fighter. This will not fully destroy a skull ship however which has more than double the health of a 3 star. The Cyclotron Ballista is also one of the best choices for filling a very small space for a weapon such as on a hauler built solely for trading, giving the hauler a powerful yet cheap defensive weapon.

The Cyclotron Ballista can be used in movement, but it is far surpassed in its effectiveness by the Phase Beam, Photon Cannon & Infra-Knife Accelerator in this circumstance. When on a ship made for battle, the Cyclotron Ballista is most definitely at home but should certainly be paired with another weapon that is more suited for movement. I would not advise using a Rocket Launcher before switching to a Ballista, the Rocket Launcher does have a great advantage of being able to aim and fire far above the range of the ballista to get an extra shot in, the drawback is that the Rocket launcher will fire it’s Rockets at twice the speed of the Ballista, which will cause the ship to turn away before the Ballista fire reaches it. It is far more beneficial to stick purely to the Ballista switching to something like the Phase Beam as either the volley ends or the enemy turns off.

This means that it is largely pointless to have both the Rocket Launcher and the Cyclotron Ballista. <Weapon Ranking> To keep things simple, I have split the very basics of battle into 2 distinct situations. These are Static and Movement based fighting. I’m fully aware that there are many intricacies to battle and certain weapons will shine in specific techniques, but these techniques are usually built privately by the individual player, and for the most part, Static and Movement covers everyone well.

For static, which is when you stay still in one location and wait for the enemy to come to you, giving you an effectively still target from your perspective, the Cyclotron Ballista is by far the superior, dealing an insane amount of damage that has the upside of having your enemy turn off just in time to overheat and cooldown your weapon for the next run, that is of course, if the enemy even survived. The second and last in this category would be the Rocket Launcher and Phase Beam Combo, aim your rocket, wait until the second the enemy itself fires, alerting you that the Phase Beam range has been reached, and fire your rocket while immediately turning to Phase Beams to finish off.

The big downside of the static approach is that in fights involving more than one enemy, you will be taking an incredible amount of damage and must replenish your shields constantly, this isn’t really too much of an issue, it’s just a little boring in comparison. When it is one on one, you will take almost no damage and obliterate the enemy. For Movement, which is when you and or your enemy is moving to your perspective, the Phase Beam certainly wins, largely due to its instant projectile speed and lock on effect, with the Photon Cannon, coming in second and the Infra-Knife Accelerator Third.

Movement-based fighting requires more practice and general skill, anyone can stand still and drown in titanium, which is why I usually do it, but it takes practice and skill to really fly about avoiding enemy fire while tagging them yourself, it’s also by far the most fun of the 2. The Positron Ejector doesn’t really fit anywhere as a solid contender, it’s uses are too specific, you have to get close and aim very well, if you specialise in tailgating your enemies, it could certainly be the best weapon for you as with the x2 bonus it would be dust in a second.

I think there are very few who will use that weapon effectively, but I quite like that we have it. <Layouts> For the Layouts I have decided to not show a big old slideshow of different builds on screen and instead have linked the highest DPS layouts for all weapons in the description, it’s right next to the timestamps for the sections of this video in case you wanted to skip back or forward to a particular section. There are also some suggested full builds to meet different criteria, whether it’s defensive Hauler or the most minimalist fighter ever, it’s all down there.

All builds are shown using Ket’s Layout Editor, a fantastic web app created by the mighty Ket that allows you to build and share you Ship, Multitool, Exosuit and Freighter layouts, giving you all of the information for the build, like Damage, Rate of Fire, Cooldown Time, Time to Heat, Range, Velocity, everything. And don’t forget that you can copy that shareable URL and paste it into the Technology Planner Calculator on xainesworld.com to find out all of the resources required to build it as well as any quests you may have to complete, or nanites you’ll need to get the blueprints and even the race rank. <Tips> As far as tips go, I would suggest fighting away from Asteroids unless you need the iron for your shields. The reasoning behind this is that if like me, your fighter is pretty full of tech, you want some slots to pick up items from the ships, so you put your Titanium for your shield recharging in your exosuit or Exosuit Cargo, unfortunately, if you fight around an asteroid field, you will hit asteroids, which means you’ll pick up Iron, this iron will go into your ship.

When you go to Recharge an item, it will display the materials for recharging from that inventory first, so by picking up iron in your ship, it will present the iron as the first option along with any other Oxides in your ship, then your Exosuit, then your Exosuit Cargo. Especially if using the quick menu as a reflex without looking, you will charge you shields with a minute amount of iron which won’t charge them much at all, yet leading you to believe they are full. You could just keep an eye on it, but I find greater peace of mind in knowing the titanium fully charged the shields.

This may seem obvious to some, but remember that hitting a ship on its backend, will result in a multiplier for your damage, this is a massive advantage and makes movement fighting all the more tantalising. If you wish to flee from Sentinels, they will not stop chasing you if they are already about, you must destroy the current squadron and as soon as the pulsating warp circles appear, boost away, you will lose them doing so, if you are fighting a nearly endless stream of sentinels on the 5th star wave and are running low on Oxides, you can cut the waves short early by flying the Sentinel ships out of loading distance from the Sentinel Freighter, you will still have to destroy the current squadron but at least you won’t get any more.

To escape a confrontation before it begins, immediately summon your freighter and fly in before they appear and it will cancel. A space station can be used to end a current battle. If you are performing the role of a filthy pirate, then ignore the sentinel ship that appears after attacking your first freighter, it is weak, so is perfect for ignoring while you pillage a fleet or 2 of freighters before finally taking it within your sights for immediate expulsion. Your weapons will be in the order that you have them in your inventory, this is specifically the main weapon modules, with that in mind, you should where possible choose you locations wisely. If performing the Rocket Phase combo, you should place your Rocket Launcher before your Phase Beam Module with no other weapon between them to ensure your Phase Beam is the next weapon after your rockets. <outro> If you have any tips of your own, please do put them in the comments to help out your fellow travellers, and of course, if you disagree with anything I’ve said or have more to add I’d be happy to read it down below.

Also this week, we will finally vote on the name for my fighter, a few weeks ago I asked for people to suggest names for my fighter and we had a few interesting ones, so now you can all vote for the permanent name of my beautiful dart. The choices are Destroyer Falcon Lancer S71 SS Shadaisy ICI Calamity S7 Tangerine Cremator Daisy Lancelot Bill Bluebird Bumblebee oder Stinger Vote by writing the name of the one you want to pick in a comment, and I’ll tally the votes in 2 weeks once I’m back from my festival. If you liked this video then hit that like button, subscribe and think about checking out my Patreon, a dollar a month is a great way to support the channel and the work I do, we also have an awesome discord that is growing constantly. But above all, have an awesome day folks!.